I read this article today about how female high school students are being told to leave the classroom for wearing “inappropriate” clothing that violates the school dress code. However, in many cases the reason why their clothing is offensive isn’t given. Sounds like discrimination and a real power-play to me. It’s scary how much power some teachers have (I taught for 31 years so I am not teacher-bashing).
These students are being told they are too much of a distraction (especially to the male students). So let me get this right. A young woman’s “distraction” is so much worse than her missing classes that she is asked to leave (and that’s not humiliating at all) until someone can bring her more appropriate clothing to wear? This, for some, would mean missing all day of classes!! Do you see what’s wrong here? According to the article, many of these young women weren’t dressing inappropriately on purpose. Many didn’t even know that what they were wearing was offensive!
Just wow. The comments below the article from parents whose girls have been disciplined are heartbreaking (a little girl in FIRST GRADE! And in one school girls can’t even show their collar bones). Sounds like another way to control females.
It would seem that not much has changed in the decades of pursuing freedom and empowerment of women. Nope, we have NOT “come a long way baby”. Girls are still treated as “less than” boys. And for teens? Excuse me? It’s hormones. No matter what a girl wears at that age, she will distract the boys. And vice versa. Duh.
But this part truly concerns and angers me: her pants are “too tight and are distracting the male teachers”. Good golly. If the man doesn’t have enough control and decency to not leer and become aroused over a young girl, then get OUT of teaching, especially with teenagers. THAT right there is an indictment of our society. It demonstrates the lack of self-control, accountability, and moral principles. Dress codes, and thus discrimination of girls, gives power to this lack, enabling attacks on girls (and all females). Again, the man is the one at fault here, not the young woman.
I do believe that girls need to respect themselves and love who they are, just as our boys do. I hope this includes not using their body to manipulate others and gain popularity. But regardless of their self-esteem, girls should have as much freedom to dress as their male peers. And we should be teaching “body respect” to our boys as well as our girls. Make it the male’s responsibility too. Teach mental and physical self-control.
Although many families educate their young men to act responsibly and have a respectful attitude toward females, these codes define all males as cave men just waiting to pounce on a young girl’s body, unfairly categorizing all boys and men as uncontrollable perverts. Really? It’s another lie that propagates dysfunctional behaviors toward females–in fact excuses it with the abhorrent “boys will be boys” entitling belief, which continues to make it the female’s responsibility for the male’s inexcusable behavior, as in rape. And so it continues, even though we are waging war continuously against our world’s “rape culture”.
These dress codes–and the control over young women they allow–need to be taken under serious scrutiny. It’s time we are DONE with this discrimination and regard our girls as the intelligent, creative, and deserving participants of our society they are. Get OVER it!!
After writing my post I searched for images to include and found many articles about this subject. Here are a couple links if you are interested. There are many more.
http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/mkdn-the-distracted-boys-of-the-dress-code-wars/
So what are your thoughts on this? Perhaps our schools will all begin wearing uniforms. That is one solution. Any ideas?
I know this wasn’t my usual “feel-good” post, but thanks for stopping by. Promote equality!
Hugs, Passionista Mimi
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